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[11]
It would be a good thing, gentlemen, that any claimant to an inheritance under a will, if he fails, should not be fined at the usual rate1 but be made to pay into the treasury the full amount of the fortune which he set out to obtain; thus the laws would not be despised nor would the relatives be insulted, and above all, no fictions would be invented against the dead. But, since full liberty is given to anyone according to his fancy to claim anyone else's estate, it behoves you to sift their claims with every possible care and to omit no possible precaution.
1 One-tenth of the estimated value of the estate claimed.
Isaeus. Isaeus with an English translation by Edward Seymour Forster, M.A. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1962.
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